Ave Maria University, centerpiece
of the gated pure white Catholic town of Ave Maria in Naples Florida, in 2008,
was ground zero in Rick Santorum’s holy war, catholic sharia jihad, against
Satan.
No porn on cable in Ave
Maria, or condoms or contraceptives at the pharmacy, and no chocolate ice
cream served. Only Vanilla! The town that Domino’s Pizza built.
Santorum
was using the devil-tinged language after explaining Obama's position on
abortion. He quoted Bishop Samuel Aquila of Fargo, North Dakota, who said
at the time, “Catholics who support so-called ‘abortion rights’ support a false
right, promote a culture of death and are guarded by the father of lies."
"This
is not a political war at all, this is not a culture war at all, this is a
spiritual war," Santorum said, according to a recording of the speech on
the university's website. "And the father of lies has his sights on what
you think the father of lies, Satan, would have his sights on. A good,
decent, powerful, influential country, the United States of America."
The speech
gained a new life this week when it surfaced on the website Right
Wing Watch and was
then picked up by the Drudge Report and a host of media outlets.
"If
you were Satan, who would you attack?" the former U.S. senator asked the
students. "There's no one else to go after other than the United
States, and that's been the case, for now, almost 200 years."
Santorum
went on to explain how he thought the devil had attacked the United States in
several areas: its foundations, academia, the Protestant Church and government.
Satan
had relatively little success attacking the founders and the foundation of the
country, said Santorum, who is a practicing Catholic. But time, like an
acid, wore away America's great institutions, "using those great vices of
pride, vanity and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants
that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition," he said.
Santorum
said Satan was first, and most successfully, attacked academia. Once
academia fell to pride and its own truths, he said, the Protestant Church fell
next in the United States.
"We
look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country, and it is in
shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it," he said.